Congratulations, Lee and Martha, on winning awards for Good News Contributor, Discussion Board, Most Testimonial Added in 2025, and Most Testimonial Cumulative in 2025 at our 2025 conference in Punta Cana! Thank you for all your hard work!
Tariffs continue to impact the cost structure and profitability of businesses across both the U.S. and Canada. With the right strategies, you can reduce exposure, maintain competitiveness, and protect your bottom line.
Watch Schooley Mitchell’s free, value-packed webinar where we’ll break down:
Who Should Watch: Business owners, CFOs, operations managers, procurement professionals, and decision-makers concerned with cost management and global trade.
On behalf of all of Schooley Mitchell, congratulations to Lee & Marla Balaklaw for winning our awards for most testimonials added in 2024, good news contributor, discussion board, and most cumulative testimonials in 2024! Thank you for your continued hard work, Lee and Marla!
6379 WV-34
Hurricane, WV 25526
August, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
We engaged Schooley Mitchell of Louisa, Lee and Marla Balaklaw to work on our telecom expenses 7 years ago. They have exceeded my expectations.
In addition to saving us thousands of dollars, they have worked on maintaining our costs. If promotional pricing ends, Schooley Mitchell negotiates new prices for me, without my having to lift a finger or spend any time. As a busy HVAC professional, the less time I spend on telecom expenses, the more time that I have free to work on my clients.
When our cell phone vendor had across the board price increases Schooley Mitchell worked to get us back to our original pricing by taking advantage of a loophole in the vendor’s pricing. This would not be feasible for businesses that are not doing this every day.
Several years ago, Schooley Mitchell converted us to electronic fax saving us money on the direct telecom expense. This also has been saving us money on our toner and copy paper for our printer, because we no longer print out spam faxes.
Lee and Marla have obtained credits for us on cellular upgrade fee charges. They have cancel led services for us, when we changed vendors. They have obtained prepaid shipping labels from the vendor, so we could ship back old equipment (and not be charged for that).
We like having Schooley Mitchell in our corner defending our interests. I highly recommend that other businesses use their expertise to lower costs and optimize services.
Sincerely,
Jerry Mullins
Owner, Air Xperts
P.O. Box 2963
Huntington, WV 25728
August 22, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
Schooley Mitchell of Louisa, Lee and Marla Balaklaw, have been our telecom consultants for the past 6 years. We engaged them to help us with our telephone bills. They have saved us many thousands of dollars. They have done so much more than that. When we needed a new phone system, they paired us with a phone vendor that put in an inexpensive phone system, and coupled that with a fractional sip trunk provide which dramatically cut our phone bills at our main office.
When we needed cell phones, Lee and Marla did a full evaluation of the marketplace for us. They compared two major vendors and different plans. This saved us a lot of time. It has saved us money as well.
We have multiple offices. When we have Lee and Marla monitoring all of our accounts for internet and phone. Every time there has been a price increase from the vendors, they have kept us informed and negotiated new pricing for us.
When billing errors have occurred, Lee and Marla have obtained credits for the incorrect billing. When we have needed to change service providers, and move locations, Schooley Mitchell has overseen those changes, so they go smoothly. When a vendor could not understand that we needed a simple move of a modem from one part of a building to another, Lee engaged with the vendor, making several phone calls to get them to understand what was needed, and that it did not need a construction crew. That would have added significant time delays, which we needed to avoid.
We highly recommend any not for profit to engage Schooley Mitchell to look at bills, and evaluate services to decrease costs and optimize services.
Sharon Pressman
Executive Director
As the Board President of Habitat for Humanity of the Tri State, it was my pleasure to attend our affiliate’s 158th home dedication, along with our executive Director David Michael, and staff.
This was for Ricky Bush, an Army veteran, as part of Habitat’s veteran’s rebuild program that was started with our affiliate in 2014.
We do a lot of work fundraising, dealing with board issues, volunteering, etc. but to see this all come to fruition, with a new home dedication is always a heart warming experience. It has been my pleasure to have been at half a dozen, or more, of these dedications during my time on the board, and as board president. To be able to help deserving individuals and families, live in new, energy efficient, cost effective housing, is a wonderful experience in giving back. I would encourage more people to get involved with their local affiliates.
March 30, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
Schooley Mitchell of Louisa, (Lee and Marla Balaklaw) have been our business optimization consultants for many years now. Specifically, Schooley Mitchell has optimized telecom and waste for us. They have also evaluated our merchant services account and determined that our incumbent vendor is providing us with excellent pricing.
To this point, Schooley Mitchell has saved us tens of thousands of dollars. They have dealt with our wireless accounts, our internet and telephone accounts. They continue to make recommendations for optimizing our services. They obtain credits for us on an ongoing basis from our vendors, when there are mistakes on bills. When we moved from one telecom vendor to another in 2021 Schooley Mitchell obtained hundreds of dollars in credits from our former vendor.
In terms of waste, they helped us with the evaluation of our dumpster costs. They recommended a new vendor and oversaw the implementation of those services. When inflation caused prices to go up with our new vendor, they renegotiated with the new vendor to keep costs in line and below what we had been paying previously. When there was a billing error where costs were billed, that should not have been, Schooley Mitchell stayed on top of the vendor and got the billing corrected. Then they obtained a credit of over $1200.00.
As important as the monetary savings have been, Lee and Marla have saved us a great deal of time so we can remain focused on our flooring business. We appreciate the time and effort that they put in to look out for our best interests. They provide great customer service for us.
I highly recommend that other businesses engage Schooley Mitchell of Louisa to reduce their costs, enhance their services, and save them time with their knowledge.
Sincerely,
Sam O’Krent
President
To Whom It May Concern:
Schooley Mitchell of Louisa (Lee and Marla Balaklaw) has been our business optimization and cost reduction specialists for ten years, for our nursing home. We keep renewing with them, because they keep performing for us. They have saved us tens of thousands of dollars over time on telecom. In the last three years they have started optimizing waste costs for us, including dumpsters, shredding. and medical waste. They saved us tens of thousands of dollars more in the waste cost segment.
Schooley Mitchell’s persistence in staying on top of vendors and making sure that the vendors charge us what is contracted, has been a huge help to us over time. Vendors don’t seem to be able to maintain contracted prices, and Lee and Marla hold them to task. Our cell phone costs have been optimized, and Lee and Marla have assisted us with cell phone upgrades. They have had upgrade fees waived, and obtained below retail cost pricing for us.
Schooley Mitchell also monitors our internet bandwidth utilization. Recently they found our bandwidth utilization had jumped up. They got our IT vendor involved to track down the issue, and bring utilization back to normal.
Lee and Marla have created a succession plan for us for our old phone system, just to be ready, if something happens to it. They have also optimized our television costs, and are keeping our TV vendor in line. They also recently handled a problem for us, with our internet service provider during an internet outage.
I highly recommend other medical entities, and businesses hire Schooley Mitchell to deal with their cost and service issues in different cost categories that they cover.
Sincerely,
David McKenzie Jr
Administer, The Jordan Center
1010 Coles Blvd. Portsmouth, OH 45662
February 16, 2024
To Whom It May Concern:
Schooley Mitchell of Louisa, Lee and Marla Balaklaw, have been our telecom consultants for the past 7 years. To date, they have saved us thousands of dollars. They have most recently obtained promotional pricing from Spectrum for us. They have previously reduced our Spectrum costs. They have obtained other credits for us in the past from Spectrum.
Schooley Mitchell has obtained Verizon line access discounts. They have obtained credits for upgrade fees. In the past, they have found billing errors on Verizon statements and had those corrected.
Lee and Marla have assisted us with Verizon One Talk issues. Several years ago, our staff were having significant issues with Verizon One Talk services for our VoIP telephony. They intervened with Verizon, and item by item fixed all of the outstanding issues that were causing our employees problems. Our employees had been unable to get these issues fixed in their dealings with Verizon. Voicemail passwords had to be reset so voicemails could be received. Correct phone numbers needed to be assigned to the correct devices. Schooley Mitchell in 2019 obtained significant credits in the hundreds of dollars for Verizon One Talk service related to all of the above problems. Verizon had not delivered on its implementation promises, and Schooley Mitchell forced them to live up to the Verizon contract terms. More recently they helped us get new lines activated on previously used desk phones, as our firm has added employees.
Lee and Marla on our Verizon cellular account recommended the move of high data use smartphones to unlimited data plans from shared data plans to avoid exceeding our data limits. This required the creation of a sub-account. That helped us avoid paying expensive data overage fees. They have also assisted with ordering new smartphones.
Previously Schooley Mitchell looked at our natural gas bills and costs, providing a free analysis. Even though they were not able to secure any savings for us, we appreciated their efforts and recommendations.
We highly recommend that other firms hire Schooley Mitchell to evaluate their costs in different categories. They are thorough and meticulous with their approach. They provide technical guidance for the optimization of services. The time that they save us, allows us to focus on our core functions in our architectural firm.
Sincerely,
Mark Holsinger
COO
At Schooley Mitchell’s annual conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Lee and Marla Balaklaw received the following awards:
Congratulations Lee and Marla and thank you for all the hard work you do!
